Stay Updated!

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 51 other followers

The Social Media Trainer

I'm Justin Cofield, and these are my thoughts on how to use Social Media as a tool in our business.

Running an effective office in the New Era of Vector Marketing will take a different kind of skill set than was required in the past. The best leaders in Vector are the best at engaging people in a meaningful way at the individual level. They understand that each person in their office, from Recruiting Assistants to Sales Reps to Sales Managers, needs to be treated and respected as individuals. No role in the office is a small role.

In the New Era, we need to become as effective at engaging people online as we have been offline for the past 30 years.

Currently Reading

Branding Guidelines for Your Office’s Page

Who has the more consistent brand on Facebook, Starbucks or Peet’s?

I want Vector Marketing and Cutco Cutlery to be as widely recognized as Starbucks. While each Starbucks you patron will consist of different people, giving each location a different personality, the general feel of the brand is uniform. You get this feeling when looking at how their brand is portrayed on Facebook.

Understanding that each office has an individual personality that is reflective of the local leader (YOU), it is important to realize that, like Starbucks, there are guidelines each office should follow to ensure our brand is fully recognizable in the most positive way. The company gives the brand life, but you give the brand personality by how you run your office, and your office’s personality will be reflected in the Facebook page you create.

Here are a few tips to ensure your office’s brand on Facebook has life and personality:

Get a customized Vector logo – This is the first image people will see of your office, and it’s important to maintain unity on Facebook by having a customized Vector logo, much like the above Starbucks example. We will even make it for you! Adding photos of your team is encouraged to show your office’s culture and personality, but when it comes to the first image people see, brand consistency is key.

Search Friendly Name – By naming your page “Vector Marketing – Your City, Your State”, you are making your page visible to Google whenever someone searches for Vector Marketing in your territory. Make sure you’re visible when people are researching you so they see the good you’re doing in your territory. If your page is currently named something different, you can change it by simply ‘editing’ your page’s information. If you have over 100 fans, however, you won’t be able to change the name. It might be in your interest to boot a few fans so you can adjust your name and then re-add them later.

Set the Right Vanity URL (Username) – You’ve got your page now, and you want to make it easy to direct people to check out your page. What do you do? You want to get a Vanity URL, or username, so your office has a clean web address. While it might be tempting to select “SanDiegoBallers” or “OurDynastyIsBetterThanYourDynasty” as your username to build camaraderie and a sense of team pride, I highly suggest against it, since having the right URL is one of the best ways to get picked up by Google’s web crawlers. You want to make sure you have the right ‘keywords’ in your username so your Vanity URL has the best shot at getting picked up by Google. That’s why I suggest having “VectorMarketingYourCityYourState” as your username. By doing this, you are making it easier for people to see your office’s page when they search for Vector Marketing in your territory.

A thing about usernames, once you pick one, you can’t change it, so if it’s already set, and it’s not ideal, just make sure the name of your page is set appropriately, as this still carries good weight with Google.

What About You? – This is another part of your page that Google loves, and we need to stack it with relevant keywords. When we set up your page, we put Cutco’s mission statement in the About section of your page, but you really want to customize this to your office. The above example is a perfect guideline because it includes relevant keywords (Vector Marketing, Cutco Cutlery, Office) and it tells a micro story about the office. If you have a team slogan, this would be the place to put it AFTER you have listed out the above info.

Where Are You? – Include your office’s address when editing your info and encourage people to ‘check-in’ at the office. This helps create micro stories in your reps’ newsfeeds that their network might see, and can potentially spark conversations for your reps around what they’re doing.

What Do You Like? What are the brands, businesses, and causes that YOU like? What schools are in your territory? Here are a couple of great examples of offices who have liked other pages, and this gives their office some personality that reflects the leader. Sports team in your area? Show them the love! Let your personality shine through because your office’s personality is an extension of your own.

These are the most important branding guidelines that will help your office’s personality to shine through on Facebook, but will also make sure you maximize your chances of showing up in Google and other search engines when people want more information about you.

“Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you.”